School Girl Makes Japan Uneasy

Born in a Tokyo suburb, Noriko Calderon chatters in Japanese and at 13 looks like any other sailor-uniformed Japanese schoolgirl. To Japan's immigrations officials, however, Noriko and her alien family represents the thin edge of a wedge that threatens Japan with foreign hordes.

That explains why Japan's gatekeepers have left her a tough choice: Leave home and travel to the Philippines with her parents, who were nabbed after living illegally in Japan for 16 years. Or, abandon her folks and stay alone on a temporary visa until she finishes school. Noriko has until Monday to decide, otherwise immigration officials will throw the whole family out.

A closed country ruled by samurai lords until American warships forced it to open up, Japan has never fully overcome its awkward relationship with the rest of the world. The prolifigate use of "international" in business jargon, company logos or building names attests to a keen Japanese need to be seen as a global player. Yet many still buy into the idea that they are too apart, or too unique for any non-Japanese to really fathom them. Others who are more extreme pride themselves on keeping the Japanese "race" pure so they avoid the social strains that multiracial communities must deal with.

As the existence of Noriko suggests, the reality is different. Though a mere 2% of Japan's population is foreign-born, compared with one in ten in the American melting pot, foreign communities have established themselves among their Japanese hosts. How many illegal immigrants there are nobody knows exactly. The nation's 14,000 miles of coastline offers ample choice of secluded beaches for water-borne migrants to slip in.

Though Japan's rulers are loath to admit it, the Japanese would miss foreigners if they packed their bags and left. Japan's premier company,
Toyota Motor
, would struggle to build its cars without them. A tenth of the workforce in Toyota City, a former textile town in central Japan that is the automotive giant's base, is non-Japanese, mostly Brazilian or Chinese. Working in factories supplying the parts and components that Toyota screws and snaps together to build its cars, they help keep the "Detroit of the East" humming.

Although that hum has grown fainter as the global recession bites, the need for more foreign hands is growing. The reason is that the Japanese are dying out. Japan's population has started to contract and by 2030 there will be 10 million fewer people. Its workforce will shed more than half a million people a year as baby boomers head into retirement and start spending taxes rather than paying them.

Though this demographic crisis is unfolding, Japan's political leaders rarely suggest the obvious solution of importing foreigners to keep its economy ticking over. Instead, they browbeat women to have more babies. Others enthuse about a technological utopia of automation that will keep Japan foreigner free. After all, they figure, better to have granny nursed in the steely embrace of a robot than by the warm hands of a Filipino nurse.

Though youthful Noriko is just what Japan needs, she is, it seems, not worth keeping around. Having exhausted all legal avenues to win permission to stay together in Japan, there is one last sliver of hope for the desperate family. The office of the United Nations's High Commissioner for Human Rights has made an "emergency inquiry" to Japan regarding the girl's case.

Appeals to compassion may not have worked, but questioning Japan's standing in the international community may.